View full sizeNick Offerman, with Alison Brie, plays the cranky dad in "The Kings of Summer."CBS Films

Nick Offerman plays a cranky widower named Joe Toy who drives his son crazy in "The Kings of Summer." The film, shot in Northeast Ohio last summer, arrives in Cleveland area theaters on Friday, June 7. Offerman is so funny as Ron Swanson on NBC's "Parks and Recreation," you might assume that his specialty is TV zaniness leaning toward sketch comedy and improv. Not so.

Offerman, who is married to Megan Mullally (who also appears in "The Kings of Summer"), actually worked for years as a stage actor in a variety of plays and does not consider himself a comedian. The two are currently starring in the two-person comedy-drama "Annapurna,"which runs through next Sunday at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles.

I caught up with Offerman, who turns 43 later this month, on the phone from his woodworking shop in Los Angeles. The actor, who also has four other films coming out this year, offered thoughts addressing several topics:

On spending time in Cleveland last summer:

I've got to say Cleveland was incredibly beautiful. I was astonished at all of the different and lush landscapes. And the people and the food were nothing short of magnificent.

On working on a small budget film:

I started as a professional in Chicago theater, and I had my own company called the DefiantTheatre, and nothing is more satisfying than making a piece of art with 20 people where you can see everyone giving their input 24/7. I'll never lose my affinity for these little companies, where everyone's busting their humps together and at the end of the day, whoever's free helps the wardrobe lady carry all the clothes out to her car.

On being considered a "comic actor."

I've just been an actor my whole life. I started in theater and would do whatever was in the season. Maybe it's Shakespeare, maybe it's Sam Shepard, maybe it's Neil Simon. So one month you're doing Chekhov and they've decided everyone's from East Germany, and then the next show you're doing a Martin McDonagh comedy where you're doing brutal, hilarious Irish.

On improvising on "Parks and Recreation":

Our cast on "Parks and Rec" is mostly peopled with folks who have come from this "official" world of comedy, and they're specifically trained in sketch or improv, and we have a stand-up comic or two. And the tambour of modern comedyseems to be that you cast these really facile performers who can do your scripts admirably but then also can bring you added flavor with their own improv skills. So even on a show that's as masterfully scripted as "Parks and Rec," after we've done the script, we do what we call a "fun run," where we open it up. I'm free to add or subtract or put a bend on anything I want, and those muscles are really fun to keep in shape.

On playing the clumsily emotional father in "The Kings of Summer":

What I learned in the first four or five years as an actor, in college and then in Chicago, was that I was really bad at acting. That's because I had yet to understand that my own personality, my own unique self, was the most valuable thing I could bring to any character. Up until that point, I was like, "Well, let's see what John Cusack did with this kind of part, maybe I can try that. He's pretty cool." And then it was, "Oh, why is that ineffective and why do I feel so stiff?" It's because I was trying to be John Cusack being cool. I realized what was valuable was to simply be as clumsy as me, and then people were like, "Hey, he'd be great as a clumsily emotional father."

On his new book, "Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living" (due in October):

It's a combination of memoir, personal rants, cautionary tales and some mediocre song lyrics. It was a lot of fun.

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